Thanks for all the input. It’s about 50/50 on people who prefer download/streaming. I will work on finding the best solution to offer them both to members.
Hi,
I’m still working on setting up the new gotcuffs.com website and the biggest issues I’m working on is setting the site up to be 100% mobile friendly and to have streaming fully functional. Not to get into technical reasons with streaming and cdn’s, would you be happy with a gotcuffs.com site that was a streaming only membership? The site (would also include all hogcuffed.com videos) would offer monthly memberships for $19.99 (cheaper for longer terms) and would be for unlimited streaming. The streaming would work through a large 55 location cdn and videos will stream to phones, tablets, and of course any computer. The bit rate would be adjusted depending on if you are using 3G, 4G, or wi-fi. Downloads of videos would be optional and would be a separate charge. If you are a streaming member you would get heavily discounted downloads. You could stream all you want, but if there are certain videos you want to download to your hard drive you would pay a dollar or two for it. If you are not a member you can still just purchase the download, but it would cost more. You could also purchase a video for streaming and access from any device anytime and it never expires (much like buying movies on amazon).
I’m finding most people prefer streaming rather than downloading and moving forward to the future I think this trend will continue as people use tablets and phones more than desktop computers. One of the problems with a lot of sites is the streaming is slow or choppy for a lot of people. By separating streaming from downloads it will reduce bandwidth cost as streaming actually uses less bandwidth because people tend to skip around in a video and only watch the parts that they want. When a site is mainly download only then you need to download every video you want to watch and most people tend to download as much as they can before their membership expires. Downloads can also cause lots of bandwidth being used due to password sharing/hacking.
To do the streaming correctly it is not cheap to setup the hardware and software to do it. That’s why I am looking at streaming only memberships with download purchases being separate to help off set some cost. It’s also true that you can record a video stream on your computer and save it and some people will do that, and that is fine with me.
Basically I’d like to know how many people prefer streaming videos over having to download them? You can leave a comment on this post or write me at tony@gotcuffs.com.
Thanks,
Tony